KAOS Agent

I'm fairly certain that there was an establishing shot with the vines taking over the town and people running around including one random extra with a suitcase, so I actually do think they sort of kind of tried to show everyone in town was going if you squint really hard. There may have been more exposition about the others in town that was filmed, but didn't make the final cut.

To be fair, all of the spoilers that the cast gave out were obvious spoilers that were all things we knew would be stories based on the season finale. No one has any real idea how the Frozen storyline will play out. I mean, we can all guess and given how not shocking their twists are, we'll probably be right, but how the characters and their various arcs will play out in conjunction with that is unknown. Colin can say little things about Captain Swan and Lana can talk a bit about the Robin/Marian/Regina story without really saying much of anything about the overarching story. Hook getting new clothes and Regina contemplating revenge aren't going to spoil casual viewers' enjoyment of the show if they happen to see some interviews from Comic Con or whatever. The only deviation from this closed mouth style is Robert, God bless him, who can spoil the crap out of everything. I'm not at all interested in the Frozen stuff, so the little character moments are what will determine whether I continue watching. If those moments involve skipping over all of the Charming family issues in lieu of screaming baby shenanigans, this show won't hold me, so I'm hoping for at least one non-Frozen related plot that can keep me interested.

@KingOfHearts You forgot Snow's diner speech in your list of cons. Snow is clearly the worst person to ever put in charge of a kingdom. She's advocating that she should have picked the "harder path" over her killing of Cora rather than protect her family and people from potential annihilation from the newly minted Dark One, the Queen of Hearts and makes plans to throw everyone in Storybrooke under the bus just on the off chance they can save Regina. Will no one think of the peasants? Seriously, Snow sucks.

I think that aside from the over the top nature of Regina's arc in 3B, they haven't served her character well in terms of her being a person with feelings or doubts. By this I mean that they just handed her a bunch of stuff that makes her happy, but never give her any kind of internal struggles or doubts reconciling her past experiences with these new things or any worry about it not working out. It's just here's everything you ever wanted and she just accepts it without any kind of self-reflection. This is a woman whose life went completely off the rails due to her reaction to pain at the loss of her first love. How is it that Regina just jumps right into a relationship with a guy who she is told is more than her true love, but her soul mate and not worry about it going wrong? And I could see her going for it, but not having any worries about potentially losing this new love doesn't make sense. This is Regina for god's sake. A control freak who is often the person who gets in her own way. She would be full of internal conflict. Everyone else on this show has issues and doubts even once they've been reunited with family or found love. The Emma/Charmings reunion is wonderful, but it would have been completely unrealistic for them to just play happy families. There's too much history and emotional turmoil particularly Emma for that to happen. It should be the same thing for Regina. Where is her head at with these developments? How is she able to just throw open her heart? I remember after Outlaw Queen first got together A&E said something like we've waited 60 episodes to have Regina open her heart and I was thinking, wait, that's it? It made no sense that she'd just suddenly act this way. And then she literally handed the guy her heart! What the hell? It's just so out of character for her and there was zero build up for her doing so. I don't get it.

Let's look at the whole Robin/Marian saga as a parallel to Regina's experience. Regina's first love was killed by her mother and Regina went off the deep end killing, torturing and terrorizing an entire realm in her efforts to kill Snow and anyone who helped her, in addition to numerous other atrocities that had nothing to do with the Snow vendetta. In the Robin/Marian story, Regina played the role of Cora (or in Regina's twisted blame game Snow) in the death of Marian. She killed a man's beloved wife, a person he's said he'd walk through fire for and his pain at her death was the same as Regina's at Daniel's death. Regina has never faced up to her responsibility for the pain of the loved ones of all she's murdered/terrorized/orphaned/generally screwed over and here she's got to face that she did it to her pixie dust labeled soul mate. She spouts about actions having consequences to Emma, well guess what, her actions had consequences too. And those consequences had been laid out to her earlier that day by her lover. Emma did her a huge favor. If Regina kills Marian, that's it for Outlaw Queen. Even Robin would have to admit that's not bold and audacious, it's downright evil and it would be massively sick to engage in a relationship that sets Regina up as a stepmother to the child whose mother she cruelly murdered. Honestly, the fact that prior to Emma saving Marian, Robin was sleeping with his wife's murderer and allowing her to play with his son ended any possibility that I could get on board with Outlaw Queen. Even for this show's fucked up morality that's low. Robin is a cardboard cutout at this point anyway, so I'd love it if he could ride off with his family and Regina could find some really hot guy to snark back and forth with who's much more her equal. Sadly, I think I'm stuck with Outlaw Queen angst and it's not only going to make me hate Robin, who's already on thin ice for the whole Roland shadow bait incident, but we'll undoubtedly get a cross between weepy Woegina and crazy psycho Evil Queen. And I'm down with the Evil Queen because she's so much more entertaining than whiny, my-life-and-pain-is-just-so-much-worse-than-everyone-else Woegina, but if Regina flips back to evil at all after the white magic I'm a hero crap from 3B, my TV will not survive the experience of all the things that will be thrown at it.

F is for Fairy Godmother, who will not be missed

Given that the promo for the show seems to be all Frozen all the time and ABC/Disney has sent their top creative guy to be on set, I'm thinking Frozen is going to feature very, very, very heavily in 4A. Since the urn was in Rumpel's vault, I'd say that Rumpel's arc will revolve around Elsa with the dagger situation simmering in the background. Unless they have someone Frozen related discover the dagger switch and blackmails him with it (and that would be weird because how would they know about the switch and the resulting fake alibi for Zelena's death?), I would be surprised if the dagger will be a big thing early in the season. Meanwhile, Regina will be coming up with some diabolical plan to rid herself of Random Peasant #5373 aka Marian that Emma freed from her dungeons. If Marian ends up being evil, I will be seriously pissed. I'm tired of this show taking what should be legitimate victims of the Evil Queen and making them evil as some sort of justification that what Regina did wasn't so bad. They completely swept what she did to little Owen under the rug by making him a torturing kidnapper as an adult. It's time this show stands up and makes Regina face actual long term consequences for her evil actions. And Emma should stay far away from Regina and her issues with her boyfriend unless it's to tell her to suck it up.

Considering the nonsense I've heard that in the DVD commentary the writers said that the Emma/Snow conversation in "Lost Girl" was originally written as an Emma/Hook one, I've come to conclusion that they really don't care about dealing with the very real issues they gave Emma. I mean, it makes sense that Hook would understand that Emma was a Lost Girl since he took one look at her and knew she was an orphan, so him being the one to figure it out does work, but that the writers didn't immediately recognize that this moment should be about Emma and facing her relationship issues with her parents (and her mother in particular) is really indicative of their mindset about the Emma character and the Charming family in general. I know we all complained that the Lost Girl flashbacks were of Snowing and not of Young!Emma, but hearing this news just makes me want to throw things. I remember even Ginny and Jen being so excited about this scene (and I think JMo said it was one of her favorites of the series) and finally starting to address it all and now I find that it wasn't part of the initial plan? I love that someone stepped up and fixed it so that it happened because it was wonderful, but what the hell?

I've never minded Cinderella so much because that was someone who was pretty well trying to make the best of an unescapable situation. She wasn't looking for a prince to take her away from it all or really expecting a fairy godmother to save her. And really all Miss Bibbity Bobbity Boo offered to do was give her a night away from it all which gave her a nice break and a bit of wish fulfillment. That the prince fell in love with her was happenstance. Disney's Snow White, on the other hand, is awful. She's living in the middle of the forest with some dwarfs singing about how someday her prince will come, but never doing anything about fixing her life on her own. Yeah, sitting around waiting for Prince Charming to show up sounds like a great idea. That he actually shows up and immediately falls for her sends a terrible message. I won't even go into how stupid she is to accept and eat food from a creepy stranger. Emma would knock that woman upside the head and tell her to get a life. I think even Mary Margaret would be embarrassed about that version of herself.

I blame Neal for a lot of Emma's issues, but I can't see blaming him for Emma picking up something he said about his home and applying it to her own life. He wasn't handing out advice, he was just talking. Emma was someone who'd never had a home and thus, couldn't define it if she ever found it. Emma told Hook that as a kid, she ran away. It's just what she did. She then went on to say that the first time she did it (which was long before she ever met Neal), she wondered if she'd made a mistake and might miss it. But she never did miss anything. Neal's description of home fit her own life experience of not having one, so she took it and ran with it. In some ways, it gave her justification for always running from everything because even if she knew she should stay somewhere, as long as she didn't miss it, she can rationalize that it was never right for her. All that said, I fully agree that her epiphany came out of nowhere and completely ignored a ton of issues that the writers themselves had set up throughout Season 3. Emma's Lost Girl conversation, Snow's Echo Cave confession, Emma's loss of her family again in "Going Home", Henry's physical well being under constant threat from various villains, Henry fitting into the real world where he belongs and no longer being lonely and friendless, the fact that she was giving up the very nice life she built while supporting an 11 year old after starting with nothing but the clothes on their backs and a 15 year old car. Nope, can't deal with that. Instead Emma sees Snow die and suddenly all of these very real issues aren't important, she needs to live in her parents' back pockets because no one has ever heard of vacations or weekend visits. Realistic character development is not something these writers wanted to put a whole lot of effort into.

I think Leo is to Regina what Milah is to Rumpel in that neither Rumpel or Regina are reliable narrators of their respective spouses' motivations, actions or feelings. Unless we saw it onscreen, it's hard to accurately judge the truthfulness of any statements made by Regina about her husband. I wouldn't trust Snow's view of her father's marriage either. It's always going to come through the lens of the individual character's bias and with regards to Regina, it also comes when she is trying to manipulate someone into killing her husband, so it's very suspect.

That conversation with Snow did her absolutely zero favors. Emma had expressed her unhappiness by saying she'd forgotten what it was like in Storybrooke with its witches and time travelling holy wars. She also obliquely referenced how difficult it was to have regained her memories. Then, when she mentioned that she was happy and life was good in New York, Snow brushed it off by saying well, yeah but it wasn't home. So Emma's happiness and safety aren't legitimate reasons to want to go back to NYC? It starts to come off as who cares whether you're happy or not, the only thing that matters is your family. The family that had twice planned to leave Emma because they wanted to live somewhere else - once completely by choice with the beans and once by staying in Neverland. So the message is that Emma is wrong for wanting to live elsewhere, but Snow & David can choose to live wherever they want regardless of whether Emma wants to go with them? Nice double standard. Apparently, Emma is the only character who is obligated to sacrifice her life and happiness for everyone else. And the fact that she is the one who must sacrifice for all of these people who have screwed her over is very troublesome. Emma is a character who has so many problems and has suffered so much and so desperately needs to work through her issues, but her own wants and needs are continuously painted as selfish and wrong. And you know, sometimes they are wrong, but for someone who never had her needs and feelings taken into account for her entire childhood, I feel like she's freaking entitled to a bit of selfishness now that she has control of her life. The writing needs to give some balance to Emma and not just feed a storyline where Emma's very realistic feelings are always painted as wrong and mean.

No, no. There are plenty of places where it needed to be said. Honestly, Emma doesn't need to be ready to hear it. A child who grew up thinking she was completely unloved needs to hear those words. Repeatedly. And how could they not have said we'll love you forever and we'll miss you when they said goodbye at the town line in Going Home? They didn't know she'd be losing her memories at that point, so shouldn't the final takeaway message from her parents have been about love? Emma being able to handle it shouldn't even have come into the equation at that point. Maybe they did say it and I've forgotten. Someone please find me an instance where these people actually express their love to their daughter. For a show that's all about True Love and hope it should not be this difficult for me to recall a time when Snowing said they loved Emma.

Just out of curiosity has this ever been said to her by her parents? And if so, how many times? Henry and Emma say I love you to each other frequently, but I'm not sure I've ever heard her parents tell her they love her. It's going to bother me if it turns out Neal and fucking Walsh have said it to her more than her parents.

See I think this becomes a problem because they now have villains taking on villains. Everyone's sad and misunderstood, so now it's an issue of who has the saddest past. Who is the most misunderstood? Regina has the fan base, so people will be cheering her taking out the villain, although Zelena was so clearly mentally ill that it's kind of gross to cheer for her demise. You also end up with situations where villains are now victims and justified in taking out their oppressors, while the heroes sit around and aren't allowed the same justification for extracting justice on those who injured them. If Regina and Rumpel can somehow turn it around, how come other villains aren't given the same courtesy? Greg became a monster because of Regina's actions, but we're supposed to cheer at his death (which of course I did because I just wanted him off my screen) and enjoy Regina's smug smirk when she learns that he's died. Greg got his comeuppance for torturing Regina & kidnapping Henry, but Regina's actions that led to that little boy being orphaned and actually murdering his father will never be addressed again. It's funny because in some corners of the fandom, there is a lot of shifting of blame off of Regina for the curse and her terror spree onto Rumpel because he made her what she is, but if you want to use that same rationale, Regina made Greg into who he is. Yet somehow Greg is a monster who is solely responsible for his actions, while Regina is just this sad little puppet who deserves forgiveness and love.

I started drunk watching this show at 3x17. At least now I can pretend some of it never happened and blame it all on the alcoholic haze. Truthfully, alcohol allowed me to keep watching the show. There is no way I could've gotten through "Kansas" without the immense amount of tequila I downed. And I can tell you that if you play a drinking game that involves doing shots whenever Regina is sad, crying, blame casting or self-pitying, you will be hella drunk by the end of the show.

Considering the writers said that her weird evil grin at the end of "Kansas" was just Regina expressing joy at finally winning because she never wins, I'm not a bit surprised that Regina ends up as the only villain who's never paid a real price. They actually think that because her own actions and self-pitying beliefs make her unhappy, she doesn't deserve to receive the karmic retribution that they desperately need to give her. And no, Marian returning from the dead to interrupt her week old love affair is not going to cut it. I agree with @Curio in that Captain Floor was pretty much the gods giving Hook instant pay back for his misdeeds. Shoot Belle? Bang immediately hit by a car. Stab Rumpel? Slammed over the head by Emma and left tied up in a storage unit. It's like someone was trying to tell him something. It's not so shocking that he started to put it together that in seeking vengeance the only one he was really hurting was himself. He just needed someone to literally hit him upside the head multiple times before he got it. Sadly, unlike Hook, most of the villains on this show are too powerful to get these continual reminders that they are horrible people who need to stop being horrible in order for someone to like them. Plus, they even get their own personal cheerleaders in Snow and Belle.

The way the show has laid out the Snowing romance, it was all very sweet and innocent. Both Snow & David were presented as believing in True Love even if occasional cynicism crept in. Even when they kiss, it's pretty wholesome which fits with the traditional tale of Snow White and Prince Charming. There's passion, but it's not overtly sexual. I think Snow views the Emma/Neal relationship as a beautiful first love and the mistakes of youth and living in this hard world where a belief in true love is considered naive and pointless are what doomed them. Emma admits to loving Neal and Snow romanticizes it all because she doesn't have any experience with the type of pain and betrayal that occurred following their break up. Given that Snow & Charming were separated and fought to return to each other even in the face of heartlessness and rejection, I'm sure Snow believes that the love that created a child is worth fighting for. Snow applies her own experience to this situation, but it's not even remotely similar and God knows, Emma isn't going to sit her down and recount the pain and trauma of being chained to a bed giving birth and being unable to so much as look at her baby and how that is all tied up in her feelings about Neal. It's all about Snow misunderstanding just how devastating that relationship was and how ridiculously painful revisiting it would be for Emma. I wonder if Snow would question her view of that relationship if she'd heard Emma's secret?

Black Beard engaged in a duel to the death over the Jolly Roger. He could have walked away from the fight if he'd wanted. I'm not saying that dueling is necessarily a great thing, but it was a fair fight that both parties consented to be a part of and knew the consequences should they lose. There's a big difference in that and even the death of someone like Tamara who had done some terrible things, but didn't deserve to die for it. The large power imbalance between the villains in this show and everyone else is highly problematic in terms of even the more "deserving" deaths.

One thing I loved about this episode was that Regina woke up and pretty much immediately went to check out her new wardrobe. It was one of those things that just fit the character so well.

This episode was just one big pity party for Regina. I think in some ways it was sort of the turning point where the writers lost all perspective on Regina and started seeing things from her very skewed and self-pitying perspective. I have zero pity for Regina here. She's won. Everyone's miserable, she watches their suffering and then she's bored within days and looking for her next toy. This just clarifies that It's always been all about Regina. Honestly, the most disturbing thing about this episode is the way they have Regina crying at the town line as Owen leaves with the police like it's her pain that I should be focused on and feel. When taken in context with the rest of the story, this occurred days after she had made both Pinocchio and Emma orphans as well. That's three innocent children whose lives were destroyed by her within a week. I have zero sympathy for her. None. I hope she drowns in her tears.

I thought I was going to die on the Roman Metro. I was squeezed so tightly into a corner that I was having trouble breathing. There was also the added panic that since I had not actually planned on being in Rome, I had no real idea where I was going or what I was doing and with all the people, I had no idea what stop I was at or whether I'd be able to get off if I could figure where I was. You could not pay me enough to get me back on the Metro in Rome. Subways bother me in general, but the ones that go under rivers scare me the most. The red line in Budapest freaks me out just thinking about it. It used to drive my boyfriend nuts because he lived on one side of the river and I on the other and I was always insisting we take the aboveground (and much slower) tram system.

I really want the show to explore the relationships between Emma & Henry and everyone else in the context of their different world experiences. Actually look at how the real world differs from the Enchanted Forest and how that affects the interpersonal relationships between those who grew up in different worlds. In the finale they had Emma very wonderfully stating that she doesn't fit into the world of princes and princesses and magic. That's very true and I deeply hope that they explore her feelings of continuing to be a misfit in 4B. What drives me nuts, though, is that it seems like Emma gets a fairy tale princess adventure and is now in the book, so suddenly she's a part of it all. She's really not. I mean, she gained a better understanding of the people around her and their worldview, but it's not going to change her own worldview. Emma is not and never will entirely be a part of their world. And that's part of the tragedy of what Regina did with her curse. Instead of looking at relationship issues where we end up casting blame on individuals because of their own personal issues, why not explore the fundamental disconnect between their two conflicting worldviews? Emma's trip to the past gave her a better understanding about her parents, but Snow/David don't really get Emma. Why not send them out in the real world and see how it goes? If they did it right (something I'm not totally sure the writers are capable of), it would be clear that it's not just Emma who could learn something. There is the same problem with Henry. Henry, the lonely, friendless boy who didn't fit into the cursed town he was brought into by Regina, went out into the real world where he became just like everyone else his age and made tons of friends. He fit in and everything worked for him. If Henry has to have a storyline why not explore the differences between the real world and the Enchanted Forest by making Henry understand why he was/is a misfit in his own world? While Henry spent a year going to movies and playing Xbox, the other kids in Storybrooke were in Magical Medieval World doing whatever hard chores kids were assigned to help their families survive. Henry has little to nothing in common with them. How does that affect his ability to form friendships with them? In terms of romantic relationships, I have some hope that Emma/Hook might actually delve into the culture clash between worlds. Emma is very much a woman of the modern world while Hook is a fairly old fashioned gentleman out of time even in the Enchanted Forest. What do these people talk about when they're not facing imminent danger? Neither is particularly open about sharing details of their past, but if they did, would either really even understand what the other is talking about? Emma might grasp pirate adventure stories, but would Hook have a clue if Emma talked about hitching her way across the country when she ran away from the foster system? Or if she talked about modern technology and strategies for catching bail jumpers? How do two people who have nothing in common outside of a core understanding of loneliness and despair actually fit together and make it work?

To further clarify what Rumpel knew about Emma, he did not know Emma would have magic because in the finale when he knew that Emma was the product of True Love and had broken the curse, he threw her the wand, asked if she had magic and then said, "Thought not" when the wand wasn't lit and they looked sad about not being able to go home. He was not surprised by this. He was only surprised when later he felt/knew the portal had been opened and grabbed Emma just in time. There's no way he would have let her get that close to getting away if he'd thought she could open the portal.

Emma was abused as a child. We know that. For certain, her emotional needs were neglected and neglect is a passive form of abuse. Whether anything physical ever occurred, I don't know, but she was definitely emotionally abused. And I'm sorry, but they need to show this visually. Stop having Emma occasionally talk about it and instead show the terror, confusion and sadness of a tiny little girl being thrown back into the system by her foster parents. They didn't have a problem showing young Pinocchio being treated like crap by a foster father, so why not Emma? It's not necessary to show her being slapped around, but they desperately need to give the audience a visual that underscores her past and helps them understand just why Emma has these walls and how damn tall and thick they must be. That said, if they go the route of Emma is suddenly scared of hurting people with her uncontrollable magic because she lets her walls down, I call foul. Just no. If she had incidents in the past, even if they were repressed memories, wouldn't she have shown flashes of hurting people in the last few years? Hook's nice and all, but she loves Henry a lot, so wouldn't she have gotten angry, sad, scared, protective about things happening to Henry in the last couple of years that would have resulted in these magic issues? Shouldn't she have been worried about possibly hurting Henry? It doesn't make sense that falling for Hook would suddenly bring this up as a problem. Wouldn't she have had the same fears with Neal? How come opening herself up and loving Walsh didn't bring out these magic problems? Not buying it for a second, but I totally see them suddenly making this into a thing for the purpose of a Frozen parallel.